Stories of the Heart: Dylan Collins

Dylan Collins and his family began their journey with a near-fatal car accident.

“I got a phone call, probably at 1:30 in the morning, from his dad,” said Kimberly Helmling, Dylan’s mother. He told her Dylan was in the hospital.

Dylan was on his way home after watching a football game when the accident happened. Now he wasn’t coherent and wasn’t talking.

After being airlifted to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Dylan was treated for multiple injuries. He had a head injury and bleeding in his brain, multiple fractures in his back and a pelvic fracture.

When Kimberly got to the hospital, she saw that they’d placed him on a ventilator.

Over the next two weeks, Dylan developed pneumonia and was trending downward.

The doctors told Kimberly that Dylan’s “only chance” was ECMO.

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, is a life-saving procedure used to provide oxygen to patients with severely damaged hearts or lungs. A patient is hooked up to an ECMO machine that provides life support by oxygenating his blood when his body no longer can.